


It's Always Darkest

by Telaryn



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Episode: s01e23, Fights, Gen, Hatred, Humiliation, Non-Sexual Submission, Physical Abuse, Rage, Season Finale, Self-Hatred, Submission, Survival, Tragedy, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 04:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3236108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the Glades in ruins, Oliver seeks absolution from the one man in the city not even remotely inclined to give it to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Always Darkest

**Author's Note:**

> I actually had the idea for this fic over a year ago, and it was supposed to be another in a series of Quiver hate-sex fics. Then Arrow lost my loyalty, and when I went back to look at this I saw that it had value, but there was no believable way with the set-up I'd given them to move them into a sexual encounter.
> 
> So after refreshing my memory with the episode, I finished everything up and let the story stand on its own merits.

Quentin knew it was him even before he started to turn. “I can’t do this with you tonight,” he sighed – sick at heart with all the devastation he’d witnessed and how much fallout was still left to come. _Thousands dead…Malcom Merlyn…Moira Queen...the city’s power brokers responsible for wholesale slaughter…_ The sense memory of holding Laurel’s slender body against his chest as her struggles to reach Tommy became increasingly more frantic still filled his world, leaving room only for the phone call – that damned phone call he’d been driven to make only because he knew deep in his soul that his number was finally up.

 _Turns out, not so much._ Unlike so many others, Quentin Lance had been spared. He’d been jerked back from the point of death at the last possible second and left to wonder, “why me?”

“Haven’t we both been through enough tonight?” he asked, facing the silent, shadowy form of his nemesis at last. “What more could you possibly want from me?”

He’d thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore. He thought that there was nothing any human being walking this earth could do after the horrors he’d witnessed that would shock him. When the vigilante dropped to his knees however, the bow he was carrying clattering to the concrete floor, Quentin understood how wrong he’d been.

“Absolution, detective.” His right hand moved briefly at his waist, and when he spoke again the voice modulator had been turned off. “I want your forgiveness.” Quentin’s pulse sped up as the sound of the Hood’s real voice pulled hard on memory. “I have failed this city.”

Panic gripped him as the vigilante reached up a hand – clearly intending to push the green leather hood back from his face and reveal his identity. “No, no, no,” Quentin began, closing the distance that separated them in a handful of strides and stopping the younger man before he could follow through with his intended course of action. “You can’t.”

He’d inadvertently pinned the Hood’s hand in place. The leather glove was smooth and faintly damp from the night’s insanity, catching and pulling against the calluses on Quentin’s palm. “If I know who you are, everything changes, don’t you see that?” he asked, deliberately fixing his attention away from the man at his feet. “Everything we’ve done, everything I am, everything I’m supposed to serve, all that goes away.”

“You would be a hero,” the Hood said into the abrupt stillness. “You know better than anyone alive how many people I’ve killed, how many people I’ve…” His voice was briefly choked off. Quentin heard the low sound of him clearing his throat then, “How many people I’ve allowed to be killed because I wasn’t strong enough to do my job.”  
****************************  
Oliver wasn’t prepared for the blow. Lance’s open hand slapped hard against the side of his head, rocking his skull and making him see stars for a moment. “You self-centered, self-absorbed, whiny son of a bitch,” the detective growled, clamping his hand on the back of Oliver’s neck and squeezing; pushing him forward and down over his own knees. “For all your yammering about justice and serving the city, you just don’t get it do you?”

His heart was hammering against his ribs, his airway severely constricted by the angle Quentin had shoved him into. The detective’s lean, powerful form curved around him, his voice low and dark in Oliver’s ears, thick with the emotions Lance was barely able to keep under control. “This isn’t about you.” He shook Oliver’s head – quick and sharp, rattling the archer’s brain in his skull. “This is about _them_. Mothers, fathers, children dead out there in the darkness tonight because people like you serve _ideals_ instead of the people like them who need your help the most.”

Relief crawled through Oliver’s gut, driven by Quentin’s obvious contempt for him and everything he’d tried to stand for. _You’re a fraud…a sham…no better than the people who brought this nightmare down on the City._ They were his family, his world, and no matter how many times he put on this disguise and went out into the darkness he would never escape their stain.

Lance’s fingers flexed; Oliver felt broken nails dig into his skin. “You get your _absolution_ from them. I’ve got nothing for you.” He shoved at Oliver so hard that he momentarily gagged, before letting him go and stepping back. “You’re damn right you failed this city.”

Later, once the night was over and thoughts of all the survivors were turning towards what might come next, Oliver would be wondering whether he’d taken Quentin at his word on purpose, or whether some crucial survival instinct had failed him at just the right moment. Whatever it was, his entire body was relaxed – almost sagging against the concrete slab – when Lance whirled and kicked him hard in the side.

Pain exploded in his body, setting of flashbulbs in his vision and wrenching a hoarse cry of pain from his abused throat. “Get up!” Lance screamed. “Fuck your ideals, fuck your absolution – show me you’re not the useless sack I’ve always been afraid you were.” Oliver was starting to push up to his hands and knees when Quentin’s follow up kick caught him in the solar plexus and dropped him again. “You were right about everything you son of a bitch – stand up and fight! Get these bastards!”

He surged forward again, but this time Oliver was ready for him, nearly levitating in his haste to put some distance between himself and the half-mad police detective.

Time seemed to stop as the two of them squared off – each of their breathing impossibly loud over the unending sound of emergency vehicles screaming through the night. Policeman and vigilante; they had been locked in this dance of mutual loathing and self-disgust for so long it had made all the sense in the world for Oliver to seek out Lance with the world crumbling around them. Lance would hit him, humiliate him, and Oliver’s own feelings of self-loathing would be validated.

And yet…Oliver knew as his breath steamed in the damp air, that he wasn’t willing to die just so Detective Lance could be proven right. Not here. _Not yet…_

“This ends _tonight_ ,” Lance growled. “It ends here and now. You go back out there and prove to me that you are the hero this city needs – not just the one it deserves – or the next time I see you I will do everything in my power to send you straight back to hell.”


End file.
